OHSU

One Down: Make Cancer the Victim

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The Mill had the honour of collaborating with Wieden+Kennedy on Oregon Health & Science University's (OHSU) new campaign. Directed by The Mill's Robert Sethi, 'One Down: Make Cancer the Victim' is a visually stunning look inside the body, showing the progression of cancer and, in this case, its disappearance.

OHSU revolutionised the treatment of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, making a once lethal disease non-lethal for hundreds of thousands of people. And having taken one cancer down, they're going after the rest.

Ashraf Ghoniem, 3D lead artist, detailed; "Instead of individually sculpting each cell we used a set of noise and rules to randomly generate them, giving us a lot more freedom. And the comp team, led by Martin Karlsson, did a really excellent job. They took our renders and really pushed the electro-microscope effect to the maximum."

Robert Sethi, director and creative director, explained: "This piece is inspired by reality without trying to replicate it: it's a way of visually conveying the message that OHSU has found a way to successfully treat a type of cancer. Whilst we did a lot of research to understand cells and cancer, we used it more for inspiration.

Initially it's a darker world which progressively lightens as the cancer explodes and disappears. The colors shift and the camera goes from static to loose movements, all conveying this sense of hopefulness and victory.

It was an incredibly gratifying piece to work on not just from an artistic point of view: everyone has a loved one that's been affected by cancer, so working on a project that might help people in the future was a very rewarding thing."